LFPA Executive Summary – California

The goal of the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program is to establish cooperative agreements with state governments and Tribal governments for the purpose of purchasing food, supporting local producers, and socially disadvantaged farmers. The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) will develop a partnership with multiple agencies to meet this goal. CDSS will be sub-awarding the funds to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), California Department of Public Health (CDPH), California Association of Food Banks (CAFB) and California Food Banks. Each participating agency and food bank have submitted their own strategy for using the funds, which totals $43,370,751 in California. California intends to distribute these monies to the majority of the 58 counties, serving approximately 250,000 families. The funds will be used for the purchase of food from local/socially disadvantaged farmers, hiring of personnel that will focus on outreach and education to the farms within the geographic regions improve the support of local producers and socially disadvantaged farmers and producers. CDSS believes that LFPA funding will provide a significant opportunity to distribute food throughout the state, while economically benefiting about 250 local and socially disadvantaged farmers/producers and small to medium-sized food aggregation businesses. This concept will develop a parallel and stronger hunger relief system by including the local food system at the community level, resulting in new connections between local food producers and community food distribution organizations.